#dramaticmonologue

Nice house. Nice lawn. No electronic doorbell

staring out at the world with its tiny blue eye,

no security cameras, no Beware of Dog sign,

so I’ll cruise by maybe twice, never three times—

the neighbors get suspicious—and once I’m

convinced that you’ve gone away to go to work

or whatever the hell you suburban people do,

I will pull my black SUV into your driveway,

slip through the gate and into the backyard, and

break in through the kitchen door where nobody

is watching, and my buddy will sit behind the

wheel, watching, police scanner fuzzing and

humming, pretending to be talking on his phone

while his eyes scan the windows across the street

in case any nosy, hair-curler heads pop out from

behind the blinds to stare at the strange vehicle

parked in front of Roger’s house, while two of us

ransack your bedroom drawers, the jewelry in

the shiny wooden box, the roll of hundreds hidden

in your sock drawer, the nickel revolver stashed

under your sweaters—the 55-inch TV is too big

so we’ll snatch your fancy X-box and a laptop

sitting on the dining room table, and on my way

out the door, I’ll help myself to that 18-year old

Johnnie Walker sitting unopened on the shelf,

wondering why folks always hide stuff in the same

places; ten minutes and we’re gone, and when you

come home, you’ll be shocked and call the cops

and ask how this could happen in your nice little

neighborhood, maybe, I don’t know, I don’t give

a shit, I just take what I want, that’s how we do,

Damn liberals, the deep state, Soros, Obama,

toss ‘em all in a river. Lock ‘em up and throw

away the key. Fucking illuminati. Jane Fonda.

Hillary. Pedophiles, all probably atheists too.

If only Jesus were here. He would expose the

fraud. He would stop the vote. Election was a

steal. Soccer moms long haired hippies trying

to take away our guns. My cold dead hands,

mutherfuckers. Listening to my phone calls,

stealing my income. Founding Fathers would

never allow this shit. IRS, FBI, AOC, ATF,

EPA, MADD, assholes-every-one. Q-ANON

should send them all to jail, pizza-gate eating,

Bengazi-loving, mainstream media watching

suns of bitches. This is not what America is

all about. The Bible tells me so. And I can tell

you one thing. This is not over. Not by a long

shot. I will stand down and stand by and if any

fake news Chinese hoax corona believers want

Hey, little teenager strolling down the street,

if this were a horror film, I’d offer you a treat;

after you pass out, I would take you to my lair

and put you in the cellar where I’d tie you to a chair,

I took your phone and so you cannot call for help or text,

and since you’ve seen this film before, you know

           what    

           happens

I complimented his hair, saying, Wow

how do you get it to stand up like that?

And some girl got offended, saying,

Hey, that’s just black hair, what the fuck?

So I said, You mean, black peoples’ hair?

And she said, Yeah, you’re being racist!

So I said, first of all, I wasn’t talking to you.

Second of all, you’re not even black.

And third of all (turning to the guy with

the hair—asking him) Are you offended?

To which he said, Nope. So I turned back

to the offended and said, And third of all,

he’s not even offended, so shut the fuck up.

So she said, That was a microaggression.

And I said, Did you know that the word

microaggression isn’t even recognized

by spellcheck? (not true—I just found out

when I typed this poem) But I did say,

Bitch, I though I told you to shut the fuck up.

(I didn’t actually say Bitch—that would be

misogynistic, for which I have no tolerance)

But I did say, How can it be aggressive if

I meant it as a compliment, and the person

I said it to took it as a compliment? Did I

somehow offend the greater universe of

smug people with sticks up their asses?

She said, No, it made reference to race,

and as a privileged, white male, you have

no right to say anything about that.

So I said, Listen, Bitch (no, I still didn’t

say that, but I really, really wanted to)

There’s aggression, and there’s not,

and if every little thing in the world

bothers you, maybe you need to buck up

and grow a thicker skin about things,

not to mention, even the prefix ‘micro’

tells you that it’s no big thing, just like

most things in life are no big thing and

not worth getting your panties in a bunch.

So she said, What did you say?!? Are you

making reference to my gender? You think

because I look like a woman, I identify as

a woman, and must be wearing woman’s

underwear? Is that what you’re saying?!?

So I looked at her, took a deep breath,

and said, Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.

At which point her panties, I am sure,

were in a serious bunch, though I don’t

know from where that phrase originates,

so I asked her, Just wondering, are you

wearing panties? To which she said, Uh…

To which I said, Then shut the fuck up.

(this piece is a dramatic monologue, a fictional characterization

that exhibits the positions of two opposing belief systems and

Colonel Rupert Fitzwilliam explains life in the trenches. Rupert is 24, a future peer of the realm, if he manages to get out alive. As an audition piece, this is punchy and emotive. In the hands of the right actor, you will have the casting agent in tears. 

RUPERT: A summer night in July and here we are, darkness settling over the trenches and the constant noise of thousands of us all beating up against each other. Shuffling. Freezing. Trying to keep our stiff upper lips intact as we trudge along the muddy gullies marked with ‘Regent Street’ and ‘Piccadilly Circus’ designed to remind us of home. It’s funny though because I never remember the streets of London being lined with corpses, although the number of rats is comparable.  

They called me a hero, you know. In the papers in London. Heroic. There is nothing heroic about this. They all think I am a good soldier. I’m not. I’m really not. Just lucky, I guess.

We are a small brigade of men – men! Boys… barely out of short trousers. A young lad called Ernest, supposedly eighteen, but no more than fifteen is crouched on the parapet. His skinny legs are perched, his head low observing No Man’s Land. I doubt he has ever had a proper hearty meal in his life. He had the wan look of the working class, the one where you can’t quite tell if it’s sickness, fatigue, sadness, or a sullen combination of all three. If a bullet doesn’t get him, then disease will. I can already see the lice crawling on him. Poor bastard.  

There is a mild pop out in the distance. A shell. Brace yourself! I grab my hat, but there is no point. If my number is up, then it’s up. A thin tin hat will do nothing at all.  The bang is loud, exploding a mile along the line. It reverberates throughout my body, I can feel the vibrations as the ground shudders. Shouts. Screams. Moans. A ringing in my ears. The thuds along the wooden duckboards. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.  

I look up. The boy is still in position. Still vigilant but glancing around. Unnerved now. It always gets them like this for the first few duties. They are all ready to die willingly for King and country, but only if it comes quickly and with a bang. It’s different when it’s a haphazard bayonet to the chest, and a long lingering death screaming for their mothers half-buried in the French soil.

“Are you alright, Sykes?” I ask him.

“Yes, Sir.” He says, a wobble to his voice.

“Good lad,” I say, lighting a cigarette and handing it to him. He takes a long drag, coughs a little, his face scrunched up.

“Keeping my eye out for the Hun” he squeaks, a little voice more suited for answering a schoolmaster.

He asks me if I think we will be home for Christmas. I lie and tell him, of course, we will. It’s funny how war has a way of blurring the lines. Usually, I would never have known this scrap of a boy, with trembling hands and eyes as blue as an ocean he’s probably never seen, but here we are. I know that I would trust Private Sykes with my life. War does something to men.

I’m not scared of dying, he tells me. He asks me about the Somme. I can barely speak about it, can’t bear to tell him that the worst thing about a battle like that is surviving it. We advanced six miles and lost nearly half a million lives. I know that whatever the outcome of this bloody war, that this will never be worth it.

Cold hits right through to my bones, can’t even feel my toes, but the end is in sight. I complete the round, trudging through, only two more hours before relief. A bath. A good shave. And letters.

I write to her every night, scribbling all of my thoughts away, folding them up carefully into small, regulation envelopes. It has been three months since I saw her last, a splendid few weeks classed as unfit for duty. They said I was a hero then too, but it’s that damned luck, and it will run out soon enough, I have no doubt about it. I asked her to marry me again; she said no. She wants me to concentrate on bigger things. Things like staying alive, she said, and she showed me that night just how important staying alive could be.

Sykes disappears off to the mess to make tea, trundling off down the line, his uniform too big, his helmet moving from side to side. Too big. Designed for a man, not a child. He’s changing duty with an older Private who fought the Boers. Sampson is a miserable old fucker who has a magnificent moustache and murderous glare. He hoists himself up and gets into position with a grumble.

We don’t say anything, Sampson and me, we know that there is nothing heroic about a war like this. It is not a place for heroes. It is a place for survivors. The sad lonely remnants of a generation half-wiped out by bad choices and terrible decision making. Three years now. Three years where they move forward, then we move forward, and then we all stop. I wonder when it will all end, maybe it never will.  

The sky lights up with a bang and a fizz and an explosion. Sykes is running toward me, shouting, screaming, his arms flailing as he rattles down the line. The tin cup full of hot brown liquid spills everywhere. Damn it, man! Stop running! Stop spilling the tea!